Top Chef Week 6 Recap: Cutting and slicing begins in earnest

Sable's Heather Terhune won the elimination challenge in the sixth week of Top Chef. Photo courtesy of Bravo TV.

Sable's Heather Terhune won the elimination challenge in the sixth week of Top Chef. Photo courtesy of Bravo TV.

Kevin PangTribune reporter

Anthony Bourdain once commented that “Top Chef” is as real as television competitions come. The filming schedule is compressed into several weeks — hell on contestants — and deliberations among judges can drag on for hours. Only the constraints of one-hour television make the show feel like it's zooming by.

But heavy editing also can lead viewers to question the show’s depictions of the contestants. I remember reading interviews of “The Real World” cast members in the ‘90s who complained that producers cast them in a less-than-flattering light. “It was all in the editing,” was the common refrain.

So does it matter that the latest “Top Chef” episode sowed the seeds of a bitter intra-Chicago chef fracas? Are we to believe that one contestant calling another “the most obnoxious person I’ve ever met” is accurate — or made-for-TV tension?

Now that we’ve gone from 29 chefs to 13, the show editors have the breathing room to emphasize contestants’ character traits. There’s the one who cries. The one who takes charge. The one who’s meek. Viewers at home have lived with these chefs for six weeks and can now pick out the heroes from villains.

The good news for local pride is that none of the remaining four Chicagoans were eliminated in last Wednesday’s episode. That dishonor went to Whitney Otawka, chef of Farm 255 in Athens, Georgia.

Sable’s Heather Terhune won the elimination challenge, which was to cook a four-course steak dinner for 200 guests at the Cattle Baron’s Ball. Terhune contributed to a right-side-up Texas peach cake with candied pecan streusel that won over judges. For that, she won a new car (which shall remain nameless because the show promotes this vehicle to the point of shamelessness).

But with the win, we also witnessed foreshadowing. On three separate segments we saw Terhune chastise Beverly Kim of Aria: for being one-note and cooking only Asian dishes, for peeling and deveining shrimp and not doing more, and then in front of fellow cooks for not contributing enough to the team. Most of Terhune's comments, though, were made in the talking heads interviews, so there is some element of digestible story line the show is force-feeding to viewers.

In the sneak preview for Wednesday’s episode (airs 9 p.m. on Bravo), we find out Terhune and Kim are forced to team up, and neither seem too happy about the involuntary partnership. However, real or manufactured, dramatic conflict makes for interesting television.